AHMM, October 2010 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dell Magazines

Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

Dogs abound in mystery fiction, and play roles from heroic to menacing, from comic to villainous partners in crime. This month's column features a little of each in three very different settings.

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David Rosenfelt's eccentric New Jersey lawyer Andy Carpenter is a dog lover who takes his canine activism to new heights in his eighth adventure, dog tags (Grand Central, $24.99).

Andy is fortunate enough to pick and choose his battles, and to put his money where his heart is—the Tara Foundation, a dog rescue operation named for his own dog and run by Willie Miller whom Andy pulled from death row in Open and Shut (2002).

The type of rescue Andy performs in Dog Tags is not typical. Milo is a German shepherd who was trained by the police to disarm suspects. Billy Zimmerman, a former cop and Iraq war veteran who lost a leg, and his police career, in a suicide bombing, was Milo's partner. When Milo reached age seven (K-9 retirement age), Billy asked for him and became his owner.

Billy, who has turned to theft as a means of financial support and has turned Milo's disarmament skills to a more lucrative kind of snatching, inadvertently ends up involved in a murder scene accused of the crime. And Milo, who successfully snatches an envelope from the victim, hides it, and ends up in a shelter under guard for reasons that are murky at best.

Rosenfelt has a couple of strong suits that he plays in this consistently amusing series: a cast of zany characters that surround, protect, and occasionally frustrate Andy and some of the best courtroom scenes to be found in mystery fiction. It scarcely matters that the simple murder that results in both Billy and Milo being incarcerated morphs into a much larger affair involving hit men, corruption, and possibly national security. No, what matters is that Andy gets to defend Milo in court complete with expert witnesses. And with Milo freed to his custody, he fights a delaying game at Billy's trial that allows him to demonstrate his considerable courtroom skills while searching for Milo's hidden envelope and the keys to the murder.

The verdict is in and it's unanimous: Rosenfelt just keeps getting better and better.

Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire is a Wyoming sheriff and his constant companion Dog proves his mettle again in junkyard dogs (Viking, $25.95), the sixth entry in this entertaining series. Longmire tries to keep the peace in Absaroka County, but he has to contend with more than his share of colorful characters, some of whom work for him. But the laconic sheriff is a good match for both the wild country he protects and the vagaries of crime he encounters.

When old Geo Stewart is dragged two and a quarter miles over ice behind the wheels of a ‘68 Toronado driven by his grandson Duane's wife, Gina, it is merely another bizarre incident to befall the bizarre family who operates the dump (officially the Municipal Solid Waste Facility).

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